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(Excerpt)
CROWNING the distance pure, the mountains lie, | |
| Now full of glory in the rising morn: | |
| In these cool summits basking in the sky | |
| Like shining clouds, O river! thou art born; | |
| And frost is busy in the dell | 5 |
| From which thy feeble waters well. | |
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| But let me roll away this winter dress, | |
| And hush the madness of the driving air, | |
| And show thee in thy summer loveliness, | |
| When happy breezes rove about thee there; | 10 |
| For Fancy shivers—now to seek | |
| Thy birthplace in the snow-clad peak. | |
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| A rocky palace in eternal shade, | |
| All wildly roofed with tufts of brightest green, | |
| With sweetest moss, and gleaming flowers inlaid,— | 15 |
| Its grim and native terror all unseen,— | |
| Rises, within the forest, high; | |
| A veil of leaves its only sky. | |
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| And at its foot still tenderer is the moss: | |
| The flowers creep down in huddling ranks around, | 20 |
| And fairy odors all about they toss; | |
| Cradling in beauty thus that faintest sound | |
| Thy gurgling voice all softly makes, | |
| When first the darkness it forsakes. | |
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| Oh, in that nest woven with gentle hues | 25 |
| Thy trembling life all feebly is begun;— | |
| Child of the sunny showers and nightly dews! | |
| From such a home thy devious race thou ’lt run: | |
| Like all things else upon the earth, | |
| The purest at thy place of birth. * * * * * | 30 |
| And soon thou art a lovely brook, revealing | |
| Within thy broader depths a leafy bower; | |
| With over thee the matchless odors stealing | |
| From damask and the gold azalea’s flower; | |
| While white and purple lilies seem | 35 |
| Over their images to dream. | |
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| The silent deer about thee come to drink, | |
| Where’er the mossy sward slopes from the hills: | |
| And through the steeper banks thy waters sink, | |
| To embrace in gloom the tributary rills | 40 |
| That die for joy to reach the home | |
| Whither they ’ve spent their life to come. | |
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| In thy rich fringe that casts unbroken shade | |
| The breeze is lost, and cannot come to play | |
| On thy pure bosom whither it had strayed; | 45 |
| And mid the rustling reeds it sighs away: | |
| But thou, beneath that sadder voice, | |
| Makest thine own the more rejoice. | |
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| From this thy darkest, calmest home of all, | |
| At length thou leapest to the open sight, | 50 |
| Still where the shadows of the mountains fall: | |
| Athwart whose sombre sides, like fluttering light, | |
| The crimson birds, and birds of blue, | |
| Do glance the solemn verdure through. | |
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| ’T is there thou seest first the azure sky,— | 55 |
| A greater grandeur than aught yet to thee: | |
| There first thou lookest to the mountains high,— | |
| The gorgeous land of thy sweet infancy: | |
| Yet nothing loath to move along; | |
| In thy new freedom proud and strong. | 60 |
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| And, curving round the brown and rocky steeps, | |
| Thou hurriest to the sweetly opening dale; | |
| There first above thee, too, the willow weeps, | |
| And there thy wavelets rise to greet the gale, | |
| And thither, to some grassy cove, | 65 |
| The sturdy water-birds will rove. | |
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| Through fruitful valleys next thou wilt resound; | |
| There all about thee fair plantations sleep, | |
| Pent in by sober forests all around, | |
| Alive with feeding herds and snowy sheep; | 70 |
| And living voices cheerly ring | |
| To thee a human welcoming. | |
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| Such art thou here,—now quiet in the woods, | |
| And now in rapids roaring to the fields; | |
| Now curling round the rocks in hissing floods, | 75 |
| And now the lowland smoother passage yields: | |
| A river proud and turbulent, | |
| In many a curve and angle bent. * * * * * | |
| And on for many a mile, such art thou still; | |
| Only with sister rivers greater grown: | 80 |
| Urging thy passage with unerring skill, | |
| To make the home of waters, too, thine own; | |
| And ever with a rapture tost, | |
| To be in its deep bosom lost. | |
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| Thy course is calmer far in yonder land— | 85 |
| Where dismal woods and dark morasses be; | |
| Where not a pebble rolls upon thy strand, | |
| And earth is level as the waveless sea; | |
| Where hangs the graceful jessamine | |
| In wreaths of gold, the woods within. | 90 |
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| There, in the gloomy swamps the black pools lie, | |
| Studded with ranks of feathery cypress-trees; | |
| Which thither wading from the cheerful sky, | |
| And from the uneasy presence of the breeze, | |
| Seem pillars to the halls of Death; | 95 |
| Where never stirs a living breath. | |
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| And in the shining pond each cone-like base | |
| Seems resting on its image from below;— | |
| The slim trunks shooting toward heaven’s brighter face, | |
| Whose other selves down into darkness go: | 100 |
| And all is, like a picture, still;— | |
| Fixed thus, beneath the Master’s will. | |
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| There, too, the forest roof is hung in gray, | |
| The dusky emblem of a mourning land; | |
| With long moss trailing down from every spray;— | 105 |
| Like funeral weeds sent from the Maker’s hand | |
| To mark the terror of the place, | |
| And warn our all too venturous race. | |
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| Through such a land, O river! dost thou roll, | |
| The ocean’s sandy shores at length to lave: | 110 |
| Thy arrowy force, beneath the vast control | |
| Put back subdued, subsides into its grave. | |
| There wilt thou take unquiet rest, | |
| Diffused throughout thy mother’s breast. * * * * * | |
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